


Brother's Keeper

by rosewiththorns



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Brothers, Detroit Red Wings, Discipline, Drinking, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Loss, Missing a Father, Spanking, Staying out Late
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-29 00:02:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5110325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewiththorns/pseuds/rosewiththorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nik can't be a father to Steffan, but he can be a brother, and that will have to be good enough. Written per reader request.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brother's Keeper

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in Sweden before Nik came over to North America and the NHL. All the details of Sweden, such as the food and the medicine, are as authentic as I could write them, although I've chosen to leave it to readers' imagination to translate the dialogue from English into Swedish.

“And the Lord said to Cain: ‘Where is thy brother Abel?’ And he answered, ‘I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?’”—Genesis 4:9 (Douay-Rheims Bible) 

Brother’s Keeper

“I thought Staffan would be home by now.” Mamma’s sigh was as weary as Nik felt—worn to the bone marrow—which suggested that the coffees both of them were clutching weren’t doing either of them a whit of good, although they’d probably appreciate that fact when they tried to fall asleep whenever Steffan had the decency to stumble into their Stockholm apartment, probably drunk and smelly as a skunk. She checked the silver watch wrapped around her wrist as she had at least a hundred times since it had ticked past six: the time the three of them had agreed to meet for dinner, an engagement that Steffan obviously had no qualm about missing without notice or apology. They had waited for Steffan for over an hour, making vague excuses about heavy pedestrian traffic, until they had now-cold Kottbullar meatballs and mashed potatoes that Mamma had made to celebrate Nik being home for the weekend. “It’s half past midnight. That’s late for a fifteen-year-old to be roaming around the city.” 

“I could go look for him, Mamma,” Nik pointed out, as he had on every occasion that she had mentioned the time. 

“No, dear, you’d just be searching for a needle in a hay stack,” replied Mamma like she had every time he had offered this proposal, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. “Then I’d have two teenage boys wandering through Stockholm.” 

Mamma’s fingers drummed against the table, and, thinking of how he would make Steffan’s ears burn next time he laid eyes on his little brother, Nik reached out to squeeze them gently. Putting on what Nik always thought of as her brave smile, which usually had the opposite of the intended effect of comforting him since it normally made him feel sadder about her feeling the need to mask her distress, she added, “Don’t worry, Nik. He’ll come back home, just really late, as he does every Friday and Saturday night. I don’t know why I thought that tonight would be different.” 

“He does this every weekend night?” Nik’s eyes narrowed, as he decided that this was another topic about which Steffan would be treated to an earful. Ever since Pappa had passed away—most unluckily on Nik’s eleventh birthday—Mamma had overworked herself to provide for her three sons, scrimping and saving to make sure that her boys could play hockey and going to as many games and practices as her busy schedule would allow, ignoring any spiteful comments from other parents about a mother showing up to these events. Now that Nik was away from home playing hockey and Mattias was also living on his own and working what he smugly referred to as a “real job,” it was Steffan’s responsibility—and basically the only one he had since he was a stereotypical baby of the family in how all its older members catered to his needs and whims—to make sure that she wasn’t lonely and felt loved. Any son should’ve known that without having to be told, as far as Nik was concerned. 

“Yes.” Mamma stared into the dark depths of her coffee. “It’s bad, I know, but I don’t want to be too hard on him, Nik, because I believe something must be troubling him.” 

Figuring that it would sound too much like the resentful remark of the typical bitter middle-child, Nik bit back a wry observation about her never wanting to be too hard on Steffan, which was just as well, because it provided her with the opening to continue, massaging her temples, “My maternal instincts are blaring that something is bothering him, but every time I ask what’s wrong, he just brushes me off like dirt stuck to a shoe. I wish I could just convince him to tell me what the problem was because then I might be able to help him resolve whatever it is.” 

That was the closest independent Mamma would come to admitting that assistance would be as welcome as a cool drink on a beach day in July. She would say that she had a problem she just couldn't solve no matter how hard she tried, but she wouldn’t humble herself by explicitly asking for help as if she were a beggar, although normally her pride wouldn’t prevent her from accepting aid once it was offered. 

“I’ll talk to him tomorrow and figure out what is wrong with him, Mamma,” Nik announced firmly, because that was the best way to get Mamma to agree to help: giving her no chance to refuse. “I’ll wait up for him tonight, too. Why don’t you go to bed now? Remember you have to get up early for work tomorrow.” 

Tomorrow was the Saturday—one per month—that Mamma was scheduled to work. Nik remembered that even if Steffan, displaying all the sensitivity of a bull rampaging through a china shop, had forgotten. 

“My son is sending me to bed.” Mamma’s lips quirked as she rose and crossed over to the sink to rinse her mug and slip it into the dishwasher. “I don’t know whether that’s a sign you’re growing up, or I’m getting old.” 

“I’m not sending you to bed,” protested Nik, his cheeks flaming, since that sounded like he were banishing her to her bedroom without supper. 

“I know.” Mamma, finished placing her mug in the dishwasher, walked back across the kitchen tiles to cup his chin between her palms. “I was just joking.” 

“I love jokes at my expense.” Nik wrinkled his nose. “Thanks ever so much, Mamma.” 

“Cheer up. It could just as easily have been at my expense, dear.” Mamma bent over to kiss his forehead. “You’re a good son, and I love you. Sleep well.” 

Echoing her expression of love and wish for a good night, Nik watched her fade down the hallway until she disappeared into her bedroom, where she would hopefully drift into a deep sleep after getting ready for bed. 

Realizing now that he was alone that there wasn’t much reason for him to be waiting for Steffan in the kitchen (because he and Mamma had probably only stayed there because they both wanted to pretend that it wasn’t as late as the clock said) instead of in the living room where the door into their apartment was, Nik got out of his chair and relocated to the living room. Once he had settled in a lounge chair diagonal from the door, Nik fumbled through the magazines and newspapers on the coffee table and selected one at random. 

For anther half hour he tried unsuccessfully to read an article, but kept losing track of the words midway through sentences because he was listening so intensely for any noise that might indicate Steffan’s imminent arrival. Finally, when Nik’s eyelids were drooping like damp paper bags, footsteps and a jingling of keys in the lock jerked them wide again. 

“Where the hell have you been, Steffan?” demanded Nik, deciding that now was a time for profanity, as his younger brother, presumably trying to awaken the whole neighborhood, stumbled into the apartment and slammed the door behind him. 

“None of your business.” Steffan’s words were more slurred than snapped. 

“I can guess where you were even if you don’t say.” Nik stood and grasped Steffan’s shoulders. “You smell like you toppled head-over-heels into a distillery.” 

“Shut up, Nik.” Steffan was attempting to glare at him but couldn’t get his gaze to fix properly to Nik’s face. 

“Can’t bear to hear the truth, huh?” Nik shook his head. “Get some sleep, and grow up, little brother. We’ll talk about this in the morning when you might be more sober.” 

“I’m going to bed because I’m tired as shit, not because you told me to.” Steffan stalked past Nik toward his bedroom. “And we fucking won’t be talking about this because I’m not answerable to you.” 

“You’re answerable to everyone in this family,” retorted Nik, but Steffan, storming into his bedroom, acted as if he couldn’t hear. “Everybody in this family is answerable to all the other people in it. Breaking news bulletin: that’s how families work, kid.” 

After his confrontation with Steffan and the showdown it foreshadowed for tomorrow, Nik had difficultly falling asleep. Tossing fitfully beneath his blankets, he wasn’t certain when he drifted off into a light, finicky sleep, and when he awoke, far from feeling rested and rejuvenated, his bones ached and his eyes were swollen as ripe lingonberries. Rubbing his forehead with his palms, he strove to forget the only part of his dream that he could recall: Steffan screaming, face red as a tomato, that he hated Nik, and then his irate face shifting into Nik’s, yelling at his alive again father that he hated him…

Reminding himself sternly that reality presented him with enough problems without him needing to dwell on the ones that came to him in dreams, Nik changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, combed his hair, and brushed his teeth before knocking on Steffan’s door to begin a conversation that was causing him to sweat with dread. When Steffan, who was probably in an alcohol-induced stupor, didn’t respond, Nik turned the handle and, bracing himself for the hostility only a sibling could offer, strode across the room to Steffan’s bed. 

“Rise and shine, Steffan,” chirped Nik, yanking the covers off Steffan. 

Like a drunkard doused with a bucket of ice-water, Steffan awakened and sat bolt upright, snarling as he wiped the sleep out of his eyes, “What the fuck did you do that for, Nik?” 

“It’s time for us to have our chat.” Nik studied his little brother seriously, hoping for some indication of remorse that hadn’t been there last night.

“Screw you.” Steffan tucked his pillow around his ears, and another one of Nik’s dreams tasted dust as it was smashed mercilessly into the ground. “Do you really think I have nothing better to do with my Saturday morning—which only comes once a week, you know—than speak to you?” 

“Too true.” Nik assumed a mock pleasant tone as he sank onto the bottom of Steffan’s mattress. “I see you were planning on sleeping off your hangover, which would be a much more productive use of your time, I’m sure. What might be even more efficient than that would be not getting hungover in the first place. Maybe you want to try that in the future.” 

“All right, Nik. I get the point. Can you shove the rest of your big brother lecture up your fat ass?” growled Steffan, his speech muffled as he burrowed into his pillow. “I’ve got such a terrible headache that it would make brain cancer seem like a barrel of laughs.” 

“I have some Alindrin.” Nik withdrew the bottle of ibuprofen that he had stashed in his pocket when he visited the bathroom to brush his teeth. 

“Why didn’t you say so earlier?” Steffan lifted a bleary eye from his pillow. 

“You didn’t exactly give me a chance.” Nik shook his head in admonishment at his younger sibling’s boorishness. 

“Hand me a pill or two,” grunted Steffan, extending the palm that wasn’t pressing his pillow around his head. 

“On one condition.” Nik held the bottle out of Steffan’s reach, though his little brother appeared to be in too much of a daze to attempt such a sudden action. “If I give you the medicine, you have to talk with me.” 

“Deal. Like I have a choice,” Steffan mumbled, stormy as a thundercloud, as Nik unscrewed the bottle.

“Here you go.” Nik dumped a tablet of Alindrin into Steffan’s outstretched hand—enough to dull the effects of the hangover but not remove the consequences of last night’s debauchery entirely, since Steffan didn’t deserve that kind of leniency when he reportedly drank his weight in beer every weekend. 

“Only one.” Steffan scowled as he swallowed the pill with a gulp from the glass of water on his nightstand. “Are you trying to ensure those pills last until the end of the world or what, Nik?”

“You wouldn’t need any medicine at all if you weren’t hungover.” Nik arched an eyebrow. “Besides, I thought you’d be used to this by now. Mamma said that you go out every weekend night.” 

“What’s it to you if I do?” spat Steffan, slamming the glass of water back onto the nightstand. 

“It’s everything to me.” Nik clapped his brother on the shoulder. “You’re everything to me, Steffan, and so is everyone else in this family.” 

“Lies don’t make me feel guilty, Nik.” Steffan twisted out of his grasp, slipping through his fingers like sand at the shore. 

“Speaking to you as a brother isn’t working.” Pinching the bridge of his nose as he resisted the temptation to take Alindrin to alleviate the migraine Steffan was giving him, Nik decided to try to make an impact on his stony sibling with another dynamic they were both familiar with from a lifetime of playing hockey. “Perhaps talking to you as a senior hockey player will. Kneel for me, Steffan.” 

“I’m not kneeling for my own brother,” scoffed Steffan. “Fuck off with that sick joke.” 

“I’m not laughing, because it’s not a joke.” Nik jabbed a finger at the floor. “Kneel for me now, or else I won’t let you use a pillow.” 

“There’s a threat as empty as your idiot head.” Steffan’s chin jutted out in mutiny. “If I never kneel for you, you can’t punish me like that.” 

“Kneeling isn’t about punishment.” Nik’s blood pressure was rising like a sea during a tsunami. “It’s about discipline.”

“Well, you have no right to discipline me.” Steffan shot Nik a glare as scorching as the blaze of a hundred suns. “You aren’t my father. Fuck you.” 

Abruptly recalling how Pappa had hauled him over his knee and spanked him when as a ten-year-old he had thrown every curse that he knew at his father for some stupid reason that he couldn’t remember now, Nik snatched up Steffan’s wrists and pulled his brother over his lap. 

“What the hell are you doing?” gasped Steffan, desperately attempting to squirm away from Nik, who pressed a firm hand against his spine, holding him in place. 

“Spanking you.” On the rare occasions that Pappa had spanked him, he had taken down Nik’s pants, so, following this example, Nik tugged down the sweatpants Steffan wore as pajama bottoms until they circled his knee caps and kept his boxers up to spare them both the embarrassment of a bare butt spanking if he could. Steeling himself for his brother’s pain and resistance, Nik lifted his palm and swung it swiftly down to deliver the first swat to Steffan’s rear. “Stop cursing and start explaining why you go out drinking so much.” 

When Steffan remained obstinately quiet, Nik rained smacks on Steffan’s backside as he scolded, “Going out drinking is selfish, Steffan. It worries your family, especially Mamma, who out of the goodness of her heart has given you everything you have and who deserves your love more than anybody else does. Even if it wasn’t selfish, drowning yourself in the bottle wouldn’t be a good thing for you to do. It wastes your life and inflicts awful damage on your liver.” 

“I know all that, Nik.” Steffan yelped at a particularly sharp slap. “I don’t need to be told all the bad things about getting drunk all the time. I’ve lived through them.” 

“Then tell me what’s so good about getting drunk out of your cranium that you feel compelled to do it every weekend.” Nik emphasized the order with another whack on Steffan’s upturned rump. 

“Nothing.” Steffan gritted this single word out through clenched teeth. 

“You must see some good in it.” Determined to draw the truth from his brother, Nik delivered a volley of spanks to the sit-spots he had previously ignored. “Why else would you do it on a regular basis?” 

“I just want to drink,” Steffan muttered, and Nik suspected that he was being deliberately obtuse. 

“Why do you want to drink?” prodded Nik, continuing to hammer at Steffan’s behind, but Steffan’s mouth was closed as a clam’s. 

After a minute where the only noise in the room was Nik’s palm striking Steffan’s butt, Nik, remembering how Pappa had slid off his underwear for what turned out to be his first and only (because Mamma never spanked, thank God) bare bottom spanking when, as a ten-year-old, his stream of swearing had not stopped even after the opening swats, warned, “Answer me now, Steffan, or your boxers are coming down too.” 

He paused, resting his hand on Steffan’s heaving lower back, to provide Steffan a chance to come to his senses and catch his breath. When over a moment went by with Steffan staying stubbornly silent as if daring Nik to bare his ass, Nik’s fingers grabbed the elastic of Steffan’s boxers, which he pulled down to join his sweatpants. 

As Nik resumed spanking his now-naked butt, Steffan howled with more humiliation than anger, “I hate you, Nik!” 

Nik’s hand froze in mid-air as he recalled how he had snapped at Pappa that he hated him when Pappa had started landing smacks on his completely unprotected rump. He hadn’t really meant it—he was speaking from a place of pain and embarrassment, not honesty or hatred—but he’d never gotten around to explaining that to Pappa before the heart attack stuck a week later. Pappa’s sudden death was so unfair because it had left that apology—like so many other words of love and forgiveness—unheard, and Nik only had the sometimes hollow hope that Papa had somehow known without being told that Nik’s declaration of hatred had come more from his throbbing backside than his heart. 

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Unconsciously, Nik was repeating the words Pappa had said to him so many years ago when he had howled out his own profession of hatred, although toward a father and not a brother. “That doesn’t stop me from loving you or spanking you because I love you, though.” 

“Don’t try to talk like you’re Pappa!” Steffan’s feet flailed as Nik’s hand hammered away at his totally exposed hindquarters. “You aren’t Pappa. You have no right to do this to me, damn it.” 

Ignoring the curse because he sensed they were coming to the bottom of things (pun intended), Nik, lightening his swats, asked, “Do you wish Pappa was here to do this to you, Steffan?” 

“Doesn’t matter what I wish.” Steffan hid his face in his arms. “Pappa’s gone forever and wishing won’t bring him back from the dead, so what’s the point of it?” 

“You miss Pappa, don’t you?” Nik stayed his hand and used it to rub Steffan’s lower back instead. 

“Yes.” The word was wrenched from Steffan’s lips. 

Grateful that Steffan had finally shared what was troubling him so that the spanking could end and the healing begin, Nik, delivering a final salvo of swats to Steffan’s behind, responded in a voice he hoped was both stern and sympathetic, “Our entire family misses Pappa, but that’s why we have to stick closer together and love one another even more. Pappa would want us boys to care for Mamma and each other, and for Mamma to care for us. Understand?” 

Convulsed with sobs, Steffan could only muster a nod, but this meek gesture of assent satisfied Nik that his rebellion had been replaced with repentance. 

“All right.” Nik patted Steffan’s shoulder and then restored his sweatpants and boxers to their original locations, eliciting a faint whimper from Steffan when the fabric traveled over his burning bottom. As he guided Steffan into a sitting position on the bed, Nik added softly, “Spanking is over, Steffan. Let’s both hope I never have to do that again, huh?” 

“Yeah.” Steffan mopped his eyes with his T-shirt sleeve. “Sorry.” 

“To me or to Mamma?” Nik draped an arm around his younger brother and wrapped him against his chest. 

“To both of you.” Steffan sniffled. 

Grabbing a tissue from the box on Steffan’s nightstand, Nik proffered it to his sibling, commanding, “Blow.” 

As Steffan obeyed, Nik grinned. “As for your apology, I think that you should know that I believe as long as a person realizes they’re a screw-up, they aren’t doing too badly after all.” 

Steffan smiled shakily, but persisted, “I do want to make things up to you and Mamma.” 

“I already spanked you.” Nik took advantage of his status as big brother to ruffle Steffan’s hair. “I think that sucks enough for you that we can call the account square between us. As for Mamma, why don’t the two of us cook her Flaskpannkaka for dinner tonight? It’s her favorite.” 

“I’m no great hand in the kitchen, Nik.” Dubiously, Steffan nibbled on his lip. 

“Neither am I, and neither is Mamma.” Nik chuckled, noting inwardly that there was a reason that a family quip so old nobody could remember who invented it originally was that Mamma would forget to remove the plastic from a frozen meal if the red label on the package hadn’t screamed a reminder at her. “It’s genetic, and one of the big mysteries of life is why Natural Selection hasn’t weeded out that unfortunate trait by now, because you’d think that people who are dangerously close to being unable to feed themselves would become extinct pretty quickly.”


End file.
